Monthly Archives: March 2018

Five basic principles must guide all construction activities but we are violating them.

Air, light, rain, heat and humidity are the simple pancha sutras which can ensure that our architecture is in alignment with nature. It sounds so simple that everyone can follow them. However, what is easier to say is often difficult to do.

This truth is more apparent in the construction sector. During historic times, people did not consciously follow these principles, but designs evolved with these five sutras as the pre-condition. In many ways, architecture evolved around these five conditions. Following the technological advances we achieved, we could alter the state of nature in our building interiors, both mechanically and artificially. Architecture lost its alignment with nature.

Air moves everywhere maintaining oxygen for breathing by animals, except in the interiors of luxury hotels built by us. Nature has daylight everywhere supporting bio-diversity, except inside iconic auditoriums designed by architects. Rain ensured the Earth gets washed every year, except in our structures that bar rain. Heat and cold go cyclical balancing themselves, except in building indoors where we switch on energy-guzzling air conditioners. All plant produces depend upon right humidity, except humans who ignore it to let their skins dry up.

It is saddening to see how natural principles continue to be neglected in the majority of buildings. We are trying to ape the west, trying to prove we are as good as they are. We have proven that we are good at copying, not realising what we are copying is not good, but very bad.

Of course, increasingly people are discussing and even trying to apply these principles nowadays. Ecological designs are surely on the rise, though limited to groups of converted people today. Over the decades, there would be more people and projects joining the new movement of designing ecologically sensitive habitats, now dubbed as an elitist action by some conventional practitioners.

An early pioneer, Ken Yeang, popularised eco architecture; a thought leader, Janine Benyus, wrote about biomimicry; building biology is catching up now; bio-philia groups are getting enlarged; parametric looks into forms in nature and learning from nature is getting more attention. These all are recent western trends, but India has its achievements too.

Even a simple spatial sequencing from open to semi-open to semi-enclosed to fully enclosed with indoor courts can connect architecture to nature. Little shift from manufactured materialist style to natural minimalist can have major impacts on architecture. Keeping the windows open for air, learning to live with the available light, designing to let rain into corridors or courts, letting the body adjust to bearable temperatures and enduring humidity at least for health reasons can go a long way in aligning architecture with nature.

A tribute to Balkrishna Doshi, who has won the 2018 Pritzker Prize, the Nobel equivalent in architecture.

I define architecture as a living organism. It is a place where you live and celebrate life. … ‘I hope my work is received in the spirit it is offered. My name is Balkrishna Doshi.

The first sentence is what Doshi says in the video released by the 2018 Pritzker Architecture Prize announcement and the second is the concluding line at the end. These two lines virtually represent the human qualities of his designs and the humility with which he accepted the equivalent of Nobel prize in architecture. At the age of 90, he can put every other youngster to shame, be it being approachable by a fresher or in being able to cite fresh learnings every time one meets him, who rightfully claims he is still learning.

Most Indians might not have heard of Balkrishna Doshi, since architecture is still taking baby steps in our nation with million other priorities. However, considering how difficult it is to create meaningful buildings in our country, it is commendable that Doshi could rise above our socio-political limitations, to make India proud by being the first Indian to get this highest honour. Yet, the international calling has come rather delayed, with Euro-American architects winning majority of the last 44 Pritzker awards, where creating great architecture is easier.

Of course, the western contexts are familiar to Doshi. After studying at JJ School of Architecture, Bombay he boards a ship to the U.K. in 1947, from there to Paris to work with the master architect Corbusier. When Corbusier was commissioned to design Chandigarh, Doshi returns in 1954 to be his local architect. He also assisted Louis Kahn of the U.S., besides teaching there during the late 1950s. This western exposure made him look for deeper eastern meanings in the way we live.

Doshi has been cited for his low cost social housing in the prize, with many foreign media highlighting it. However, he deserves the award for the diverse roles he played just when India was in post-independence growth years – academics through School of Architecture, Ahmedabad; architecture through his firm Vastu-Shilpa; documentation and designs through Vastu Shilpa Foundation; and lecturing across the nations reaching out ideas to people.

What is special about this award is Doshi has been quintessentially an Indian architect, having never designed any major buildings abroad. Also, he does not follow the modernist approaches learnt from Corbusier and Kahn, instead synthesising the modern with the Indian contexts. In choosing such an architect, the Pritzker awards has made a slight departure from the modernist international architects whom they typically select.

Notable projects

Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad by Louis Kahn is an international design with an Indian appeal, but IIM Bangalore by Doshi is an Indian design with an international appeal. It virtually defines how institutes of national significance should be built. His design studio Sangath has been listed among the 125 best works of architecture designed since 1891. Notable among his projects are Aranya low cost housing; Institute of Indology; CEPT University; Premabai Hall; Tagore Memorial Hall; Vidhyadhar Nagar new town plan; Bima Nagar housing; and Hussain Doshi Gufa.

Words of the critique Alexandra Lange are worth quoting here: “As architecture has taken a social turn, the Pritzker jury has worked to find laureates that fit both their aesthetic sensibilities and an awakened sense of political responsibility. Doshi fulfils that brief to the letter, while (in a welcome gesture) increasing the prize’s geographic inclusiveness.”

Pritzker jury citation sums him up meaningfully: “Doshi has created an equilibrium and peace among all the components — material and immaterial — which result in a whole that is much more than the sum of the parts.” Still looking for the immaterial and the intangible, Doshi continues to work even now.

Few architects can imagine building new visions, educate generations of students, inspire architects across the nation, investigate into Indian contexts and advice multitudes of initiatives. Doshi appears to have achieved them all with ease.

Of course, we may also acknowledge all those who teamed up with Doshi in this journey of multi-tasking, which again tells much about Doshi as a leader and not a lone traveller, a category many creative architects get trapped into. And everyone knows, he is not going to stop, bound to travel far from here.

Doshi has created an equilibrium and peace among all the components — material and immaterial — which result in a whole that is much more than the sum of the parts.”

The real textbook of green architecture does not lie inside the walls of libraries, but outside those walls, in what surrounds all of us.

In these days of climate change, if we ask any young person how to face the crisis, they are bound to respond suggesting living with nature as an ultimate solution. Net zero buildings will only minimise energy usage, green architecture saves on few resources only, carbon footprint theory will help in consuming less and greenhouse gas emission data may help us change our technologies. Each one of them is only a partial solution, unlike the holistic theory of living with nature.

Given this position, can we re-learn from nature, the way our ancestors might have done many millenniums ago when they moved on to become settlers from being nomadic? Specific to buildings, can we analyse forms and formations by nature to list out the design criteria implicit in them?

Principles of the universe have been shaping everything in nature right from the beginning, so it should be possible to learn from the way nature designs. Possibly, the real textbook of green architecture does not lie inside the walls of libraries, but outside those walls, in what surrounds all of us.

Let us take coconut, as an illustration, trying to read into the design logic employed by nature. The thick external husk provides the cushioning needed when the nut falls from great heights, while the hard shell inside avoids any possible breakages. Outermost fibrous skin ensures the least damage to the husk itself, while the husk reduces dehydration of the soft kernel with water until it becomes a sapling.

Coconuts are round and oval in shape to let the nut roll over, which helps in minimising impact pressure and also the propagation of the seed across distances. Considering that coconut trees traditionally grew along riversides and seashores, before they were formally cultivated by people wherever possible, the nuts could also float along the water flow.

Coconut tree has less foliage compared to many other shorter trees, yet has to capture sun energy. As such, growing taller above other obstacles becomes mandatory. But then, the tree may fall against high winds commonly seen near water bodies, hence the highly fibrous swaying trunk and porous leaf. The height enables the nuts to fall farther away from the tree bottom, improving the possibility of propagation.

Multiple needs

We can notice how a single design element caters to multiple needs like the husk ensuring safety, water retention, rolling on the ground and floating on water. The way nature can synthesise diverse criteria to evolve one singular and judicious species called coconut tree is simply amazing!

Can we compare architecture by nature with architecture by humans? Yes, it is possible to analyse how natural forms evolve with design logic, without even knowing of high theories like bio-mimicry. Students in schools of architecture at MES, Kuttipuram or KSSA, Bangalore have already proven it. It is time everyone involved in construction sector starts doing it.